Many of us cannot wait for Sunday night when we can enjoy the latest installment of Call the Midwife. This series, which is entering its tenth season, tells the story of a community of Anglican nuns working in one of the poorer sections of London as midwives and nurses. These nuns are joined by a group of doctors and women midwives. Their interconnected stories are told alongside the weekly episodes about women in different situations as they give birth.
As the stories unfold, you begin to see how the nuns as well as the single women serving as midwives all step into the role of being a mother even if they are not biological mothers.
These women are constantly creating new circumstances which nourish, sustain and support the women for whom they care and the communities in which they live. As I watch the series, I become more and more convinced that women are given to us as the best icons of God. When we look at the women among us we get a picture of what God is like.
In every episode of Call the Midwife, women in the last month of pregnancy dominate the screen. Those of you who are mothers recall well those final months. You are ever on the lookout for a rest room. You never know when a little hand or foot will push against your uterus. If you are in the eighth month during the summer, you dread that you did not time the pregnancy to happen in the fall or winter. You feel like you just want the baby to come out and stop this persistent battle of endurance.
Since today is Mother’s Day can we look at a pregnant mother as a model to understand the passage. Twice in today’s gospel, we are presented with the image of God dwelling in us and we dwelling in God. In speaking about the Spirit Jesus says: You know her, because she abides with you, and she will be in you. Later Jesus talks of how God dwells in each of us: On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
Each of us has lived inside another. Each of us spent 9 months dwelling in our mothers. The mothers among us know what that feels like.
The gospel takes that reality and turns it around. For our maternal experience has the mother, the stronger one, holding the infant, the vulnerable one, in her. In the Gospel that role is reversed.
God, the more powerful one, is contained in us, the weaker one. We have to turn inward, go into the depths of our heart, to discover that we are held by God our Mother. God our Mother dwells in our hearts. The God who dwells in our hearts holds us in her loving arms.
Speaking about God as our Mother can be a dangerous business. If we dare to consider God as our Mother on this Mother’s Day, we may also dare to acknowledge the complex feelings we all experience on this day. Some of us are blessed with ideal mothers, women who sacrificed for us, provided for our physical and emotional well being, and supported us through times of challenge and growth. Some of us experienced mothers who could not meet the challenges of their task, mothers who neglected us, whose needs and circumstances did not allow them to give us what we needed.
The ideal of motherhood can never be realized by any person. When we see that she struggled to understand her son, not even Jesus’ Mother reached the perfection of motherhood. No matter how well or how challenged our human mother, in God we discover the ideal mother. None has been able to fulfill it properly but God and God alone.
Mother’s Day challenges us with very different and conflicting feelings. For those among us who lost children, for those among us who never had children, for those among us who struggle with mothers, this day unsettles us. I pray that during our worship you may dare to discover in God a spiritual mother, a mother who comforts you, a mother who challenges you, a mother who nourishes you, a mother who leads you to discover your best self. In the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gives himself to you, to dwell in you. In that sacred moment you will experience what Jesus promises you in the Gospel: On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
In Jesus, God gives us God’s very self. There is not greater gift than the gift of one’s self. Mothers know how to give that gift. May you do what God your Mother does for you – give the gift of yourself to others, give the gift of yourself in loving service.